Most social platforms make money by holding on to your attention and selling your behaviour onward. Samling is built on the opposite principle: you are not the product. You are the reason we exist.
Three promises that everything we build is measured against.
There are no adverts, no sponsored posts and no algorithm inflating content to keep you hooked for longer. You pay either nothing or a small subscription — and in return the product works only for you, not for an advertiser somewhere in the background.
We don't resell, rent out or share your information with data brokers or ad networks. We don't scan your photos, read your messages or build a hidden profile of you to make money. What you share in your group stays in your group.
Samling is made under European law with GDPR built in from the first line of code — not as a setting you have to dig out yourself. As much of our infrastructure as we possibly can runs with European providers, on European servers, under European rules.
We're moving to European as fast as a small team can — but we can't break free of the US in a single day. And that is exactly what we ask of you: you don't have to move your whole digital life at once. Take one step. Gather your group somewhere built to work for you, not for an advertiser — and we'll walk the rest of the way together. In the open, one step at a time.
Take the first stepTransparency is worth more than a flawless façade. Here is exactly which parts of the service run in the EU, and which currently run outside the EU — and what we're doing about it. No product names, but no glossing over it either.
With a German provider, on European soil.
All your content — groups, posts, events, lists — lives in the EU.
Self-hosted in the EU, not handed to a third party.
Your photos, videos and files are kept in the EU.
Runs on our own European servers.
Live connections travel through the EU.
Confirmations and notifications are sent via a French email provider.
Handled by a Dutch payment provider within the EU.
Runs in a European region.
Our own, cookie-free solution on our EU database — not a US analytics tool.
Messages to your phone's lock screen go through Apple's and Google's push networks — that is the only way onto an iPhone or an Android phone, and no app can get around it. We send only the notification itself, never the content of your data.
Technically unavoidableOur domain and the protection sitting in front of both the website and the app's traffic are currently provided by a large US company. It sees the traffic, but does not store your content. A fully European alternative exists, but costs more — so it's one of the places we'll move as the economics allow.
To be moved to the EUWhen you write to us, the mail currently lands in a mailbox with a US provider. For now that is a purely economic choice — and one of the first we intend to change.
To be moved to the EUWe don't use cookies, and we never sell your information on. But we do count a little — like a shop counting how many people walk through the door. We can see that someone looked at a page, or that someone stopped partway through a purchase. We just can't see who.
Those numbers stay with us, in our own database in Europe. We use them for one thing only: making Samling better. They're never passed on to advertisers or other companies, and we don't combine them with anything else we might know about you. No tracking across other websites. No reselling. Full stop.
Being a frontrunner for European independence is expensive. Every krone of profit goes toward cutting loose further — bringing more of the service home to the EU, one step at a time. When you pay for Samling, you're not feeding an ad machine; you're helping fund a more independent, European alternative.
See plans